Irresponsible Angel
by Lona W. Hall
Summary: Edward and Bella 70 years after they met. Bella has never been changed. Death bed scene. POV Bella's guardian angel from Midnight Sun. Vampire creation history too. Please read and review!


**A/N: Hi! Thanks for clicking on my story. This story sees Edward and Bella 70 years down the road after they met and fell in love. Bella was never changed into a vampire and is now on her death bed. The POV is of the "Irresponsible Angel" that Edward mused about in Stephanie Meyer's Midnight Sun - the unfinished, unpublished novel on her website that is Twilight told from Edward's POV. The story follows the last moments of Bella's life and also contains my theory of the first vampire creation. I am very new to writing so am hoping to get a lot of constructive criticism. If I made you cry, them my mission was accomplished! Thanks for reading and please know that I am not intending to apply any ownership of Stephanie Meyer's characters and am just playing with them. The plot of this story is my own though.**

I hovered in the corner of the room. My iridescent wings were effortlessly keeping me up by the ceiling. My eyes, indeed they were sky colored, watched the beings in front of me. The boy; lean, pale and beautifully young, was kneeling by the side of the bed. In his hands, the hand of his beloved, wrinkled with age but soft in the way that very old skin is. She, her name was Bella, looked tenderly upon the boy.

"Edward," she said, "I'm not dying today. Go hunt! You need to feed!"

"I'm staying." He said to her. "I will not leave your side. There's no hunger in this universe that is strong enough to make me waste any of the time I have left with you."

Never, in all my millions of years, could I have predicted how life would turn out for my Bella when I put her in his path. I had always been fascinated by the vampires as I watched them make their way on the earth. They had no need for guardian angels so my kind did not have any interaction with them. We were supposed to protect our humans from them, not deliberately force any contact. Of course, there were always those humans marked for shortened lives that we could not save from any of the possible deaths that awaited them. Bella was not one of those.

Is it fair to put blame on me? Living as long as an angel does, an immortal that can never be destroyed, is it hard to fathom that we may become insensitive to those we are to watch over? I knew, to the number, how many humans had been mine to protect. I could still recall every face through every moment of each life. Still, after so so many, there was no longer any reason I wanted to. No longer did I form that bond of a protector for her charge. No longer did I thrill at each moment of growth and discovery my humans made. I was fast on the path of becoming no longer fit to guard, one of the cast out destined to lead a purposeless existence till the end of time. A fate much worse than mere boredom.

My idea was to renew my fascination with humankind by finding ways to make there lives more captivating to me. I didn't have to do this with all my humans. For awhile now, Bella had been the only one I shifted paths for. Had she been hurt in the process; loosing the simple life she had been destined for? Some would say yes. I knew my Bella though and she would say no. And, that alone is what saved me from punishment from those above.

I watched again as Bella started to moan in pain. The cancer was nearing the final stage now. She no longer had long to go.

"Carlisle!" Edward called, "she's in pain!" His voice broke on the last word, his eyes becoming even blacker from his despair.

"No Edward," Bella said, "It's too soon. I'm not ready to go under again. I just want to be with you right now. Please! Just a little longer. I know it hurts you to see me in pain but I suffer more when I sleep and I can't see your face."

These two! In so much physical discomfort. Neither willing to leave the other for relief. I expected this from him but Bella has amazed me with the lengths she will go to to have as much time as possible. This is what made involving the vampires so irresistible. They inspired such extremes in those they were meant to prey on.

From the time vampires first appeared, I was unable to disregard them as instructed to do. So much like our humans; yet completely unneeded of angelic protection. The first vampire was a female, bitten by a rare mutated snake. The snake itself, a breed lasting only a very short time, was a bridge between one evolutionary stage to the next. Perhaps it's only purpose was to start the vampire race. The snake's venom activated a dormant gene all humans had, changing them from the inside out and making them nearly impervious to destruction. The venom remained in each vampire giving them the means for procreation independent of the snakes. Oddly enough, no vampire had ever discovered how the species was created. The first vampires had long ago perished at the hands of others of their kind.

The snake bitten vampires were barely more than animals. They preyed indiscriminately on anythng in their paths whether human or animal. Humans were not as populous at the time and were much further back on their own evolutionary process than today's humans. It was decades before the vampires even realized that the only way to increase their population was to leave the venom in a human they did not kill. Very few had the control and, for a while, it appeared the species would become extinct as they destroyed each other fighting for the delicacy that was human blood. Over time though, as humans became more refined, the vampires learned self-control and the ability to plan ahead. They started to form covens and natural leaders emerged. Of course, there were always those that preferred to roam alone. Very rarely a vampire would retain enough humanity after the transformation to find it untenable to consider their former species food. They fed on the blood of animals and formed families instead of covens. These were the vampires that interested me the most.

While speculating on what brought me to this place, I kept watch over my human and her mate. Clearly her suffering was getting worse. The time between episodes of pain was getting shorter and shorter. Edward's desperation and agony were reaching heights he never could have imagined. And, I could tell, he knew it would only get worse.

"Bella," he moaned, "I'm so sorry! I should have changed you when you asked. I never thought how this would be for you! I don't know why I assumed your passing would be gentle. How arrogant of me to assume I could protect you from anything like this!"

His shoulders started to shake as he cried the tearless sobs that were a vampire's only release of sorrow.

Bella was very weak now as the end was growing near. She was beyond caring for herself but her heart was dying long before the rest of her body as she watched the keeper of that heart break down. I could see her gather her strength to try one more time to ease his pain.

"Edward, you have never, for one moment since I met you, put anything above your desire for me to have a beautiful life. The love you have given me has been all I could have asked for. I don't know if I could have stood to be the source of the guilt you would have felt if you changed me. This, my life, was like a fantasy richer than anyone could have imagined. Please Edward, you must find a way to move on after I am gone!"

Edward had never kept it a secret that he planned to follow her into death. I knew that, more than anything, was hurting Bella the most.

"Please Bella, you don't know what you are asking!"

Edward was right. She didn't know what she was asking. I knew my Bella loved her Edward with a love stronger than any I had seen before from a human. There was no way for her to conceptualize though how a vampire bonds to a mate. When a vampire looses a mate, it is the last change the vampire will ever experience and it is devastating. For that vampire, there is no longer ever a possibility of happiness, fulfillment or any positive feeling. Each day is torture and I had yet to see one that did not either directly or indirectly choose a path to destruction; either of the mind or body. Edward had tried to explain it to Bella long ago but her soul was not equipped to understand the depth of such misery. Still, Edward was clearly in agony as the time of her passing grew nearer.

"Edward," Bella started, "I think then that now is the time. I'm asking you to consider one last time to change me. I've made my peace with death itself but how can I leave when it will hurt you so much? It's your pain, not mine, I fear! Neither the pain of this disease, nor the pain of the change, can come close to the pain of watching you suffer."

"Ah Bella, to change you now would seem like the height of cruelty. To have refused to change you when you were young, only to change you now and trap you forever in your aged body? I've loved you at every age but fear you would come to hate me if you were to spend the rest of eternity in a body that appeared so much older than the rest of us. I know how it has hurt you to watch yourself age while I did not. I couldn't possibly be so selfish to make that permanent for you!"

As had been happening more and more frequently as Bella became older and then sick, I felt pangs of guilt on my angelic conscience. I had put my Bella in his path and given her those things I knew that would intrigue him. Her scent, her closed mind and her lack of fear were all my doing. While I knew she had been far happier in her life than anyone before her, it seemed now to have been very irresponsible of me to bring them together. I feared that she too would be destined to spend eternity in pain. For my Bella, heaven would be no balm. It appeared that one more intervention on my part would be required to make what I had done right.

"Edward, please, I know I'll be in this body till forever if you change me now. I can't leave you though! I think I only have this night left and the next time I close my eyes will be the last. We have this one last chance to be together forever. Take it Edward! Take it!"

Bella collapsed then, her energy depleted with her last impassioned plea.

Edward could hold out no longer. For seventy years now he had resisted changing her to his kind believing she would hate him for it. He no longer had the strength. He was that selfish to change her now.

Gently, so gently, he placed his mouth on her neck. He was grateful she was unconscious so she would not have to feel his teeth. He bit. The venom flowed from his hollow teeth into the open wound. With each of her beat of her heart it spread, bringing the medium of transformation to every cell in her body.

Edward sat back and waited for the screaming to start. He knew the upcoming three days of watching her suffer the burning torture was going to be the hardest thing he would ever have to do. And he felt shame that this pain was to prevent a far greater torture for him. He did not feel worthy.

My time here was done as Bella would need me no longer. Already I could feel the pull of a new soul taking her place in my core. I floated down and gave her the lightest angel kiss goodbye. Her life had surely saved my existence as much as Edward's.

I kept my eyes locked on my beloved's face. For the briefest of moments I felt a flutter against my marble skin. A wave of comfort fell over me; a comfort I felt I did not have the right to considering what Bella was about to go through.

For a moment I thought my eyes were deceiving me. Her skin was getting tighter to her bones. Her hair was turning brown and growing longer! Her back started to straighten and the inches she had lost as aged she were back. She was asleep now and there was no pain. I started to weep tearless sobs of gratitude that my angel was being spared the pain of transformation. And, she would have her youth again! I feared I would come apart from joy! I waited with ecstatic anticipation for Bella to awaken.

**A/N: Thank you for reading! I hope you will leave a review. My concern about this story is that it may have needed more detail. I fear my writing is too sparse but I am not sure how to fix that so I'm hoping I will get reviews with suggestions or, if you think the writing is fine, that would be nice to hear too! ;-) I really love writing Twilight FanFiction so the more reviews I get, the better the stories I can provide for your entertainment!**


End file.
